


Slow Dancing In The Dark

by stillbangtan



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heartbreak, Hyungwon is her new boyfriend and he's nice, I specifically didn't give details about her so you can imagine whoever you want, No Dialogue, Okay Ending, Pining, Please read I wrote it really fast because I had so much motivation, Somebody please save this poor fictional version of Wonho, Unrequited Love, Young Love, basically Wonho is a lovesick puppy and never really gets over it, kind of, reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 07:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16487936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillbangtan/pseuds/stillbangtan
Summary: He's smiling while he's holding her but all he wants is to cry and run away. He doesn't know if he'd rather run from her or grab her hand and pull her with him. He doesn't even know where he'd go, just somewhere that he didn't mess up and she still loved him.





	Slow Dancing In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by Joji's "Slow dancing in the dark" because I'm a sad sap and I like sad things. Please listen to it if you haven't before. I listened to it on a loop while writing this.
> 
> Told in 3rd person POV about Wonho and his... feelings.

People were waiting. Nobody wanted to be the first to go. The dance floor was barren, the music playing uselessly around them. They were paired off in their cliques and dates, the stag students standing solo on the sidelines. Lights floated across the empty gymnasium floor, aimless spotlights for a dance that wasn't happening. Waves of nervous and intrigued and bored eyes flitted through the crowds across from them. It was dark where they stood, outlines and faded colors the only thing visible in any direction. The only students perfectly visible were the ones near the punch table.

Movement, the first sign besides the awkward shuffling and gesturing and searching for the first brave soul. His eyes focus instantly on it, watching a feminine silhouette clad in a flowy dress step towards the front of the crowd. There's a moment, he's sure, where she hesitates, wonders if anyone will join her and save her from humiliation. She's close enough to the dance floor that the lights overhead illuminate her face in vivid shades of magenta and blue. He can see her eyes, not the color or the shape, but the path they follow. From the tips of his polished shoes to the top of his hair where loose strands were forced into submission from the half-hour his mother had combed and pulled and slathered it in product, he was the end of the path.

One heel at a time moves her forward, bathing her entire body in scarlet pastel yellow lime green and she's beautiful, she's beautiful, she's _beautiful_ -

She stops in the middle of the floor, bare shoulders high like her nerves weren't on fire, like the entire student population wasn't staring at her, like she wasn't standing alone on a dance floor, waiting, hoping. Her eyes are open and curious and only seeing him, the silent question of if he had the balls to make a move passing between them. She was there, she was first, she was waiting, she was moving towards him again.

No, she was still, hands open at her side and effortlessly grace embodied as he'd always admired. Without looking down, Hoseok registers his legs have taken action for him, saved him this dance without words or permission. When he's in front of her, close enough to see the color of her eyes despite the haze of other colors decorating her features, he pauses. What did he do now? He'd never danced with another person. He didn't even have time to come up with a plan, he was so naturally drawn to her in the classroom, the cafeteria, the dimly lit gymnasium crowded by everyone who did and didn't know his name. To him, in this moment, the room wasn't dark, hadn't been since she'd stepped foot onto the floor. The chatter around him had faded away and he'd have gladly gone blind staring at her radiance.

Smoothly, like it wasn't him in control of the unfamiliar experience, his hand moves towards her, palm up and open for her smaller hand to rest. Their faces were inches apart, anxious eyes staring into relieved ones. She was looking up at him and without breaking that contact placed her hand in his. Her fingertips shot electricity in a straight line from his hand to his chest.

For the rest of his life when he recalled this night he'd never be able to recall the moment they started dancing or make sense of how they moved together like they'd always done this. His heart was beating hard and steady, face unwillingly brandishing a smile as they continued. He'd never felt so serene and he wasn't sure he ever would again. The corners of her lips tilted up in a smile to match his own, blood warming and coloring her cheeks.

He didn't know if the others had joined in or not because in his arms he was holding something so abstract no words could ever properly define it. If he had to try he would guess Heaven. In his head, maybe even in real life, they were the only two people there. The floor was an expanding stretch of ground to cover, room to grow, any place you could possibly dream of to spend an eternity.

He blinked, less than a second without her face in front of him though it would always be burned there in that spot, and when he opened them again he was eighteen. He could still see her, that smile and those adoring eyes bathed in colors that could never look as beautiful as they did on her. He thought his eyes were closed, he was thinking too hard again, but he was awake and it was three years later and a face he thought was meant for him was giving that smile and those eyes to someone else. Her mouth was opening and her voice was lulling someone else to serenity.

If he closed his eyes, if he wished hard enough, she would be in front of him again, fifteen-year-old hands soft and warm and _right_ in his own. He would feel that electricity over and over like it never ended, like it had zapped him continuously for the next three years. In truth, it had.

In this moment, he's watching her rest her head against someone else's chest, watching her eyes flutter shut while she sways like it's the happiest she could ever hope to be. He knows why he isn't the cause of it, but he doesn't understand why it happened this way. Her eyes snap open like she's just remembered something and instantly they land on him and she pushes away from the male she was slow dancing with, away from the male she now said "I love you" to.

When they lock eyes, he smiles toothily and nods, hands clasped behind his back like he approves of her relationship and her happiness and her life without him. The pain his face bore was gone before it could tell her he was hurting. She knew, though.

Unlike the first time she'd approached him at a dance, he was too aware of the people around him, the conversations. He was too aware of the world moving forward while he was a fifteen-year-old boy trapped in an eighteen-year-old body, smiling innocently at the girl he would come to fall in love with just weeks after their first dance.

She'd held her hand out this time, her sweet voice talking to him about a past that was as much his present as this harsh reality. He should have been the first dance tonight and every night, forever and-

It's sick, the difference between the first time and now. The gym is decorated in endless bright lights, she's grabbing him from the punch table, she's in love with someone else. They're dancing but it's nothing like the first time. He's all nerves and uncertainty and heartache. His moves are rigid and no matter how much he tells himself this is exactly like the first time, that she's still smiling for him, his body refuses the lie and makes him clumsy. Nothing in his life would ever be as perfect as the first dance he'd shared with her.

He's smiling while he's holding her but all he wants is to cry and run away. He doesn't know if he'd rather run from her or grab her hand and pull her with him. He doesn't even know where he'd go, just somewhere that he didn't mess up and she still loved him.

He can hear her asking if he's okay and honestly, the sound of her voice makes him think he is, _it_ is, _everything_ is. But then he realizes his shoulders are shaking and his face is wet and he's _actually_ crying in front of her like he thought he wanted to, and there's a moment, a decision, where he either has her or he doesn't. He's certain he chooses her, even for years of a tormented unrequited love he would choose it everyday if he could be close to her, but when he's running out of the gymnasium he realizes his hand is empty.

Suddenly he's running faster and sweating through his workout clothes as the school floor beneath him shifts into a treadmill. He's twenty years old and in his second semester of his college sophomore year. As fate would have it, at a school six hours from where he grew up and attended high school his roommate was from the same town. His face was one that'd caused a stutter in his steps and a harsh reminder of his youthful stupidity. His roommate was the one and only boyfriend of a girl he dreamt about too often. Hyungwon was his name. He found that the two of them actually got along really well, despite an antisocial beginning. He didn't hate Hyungwon, he never did. It wasn't his fault that he'd messed up and left a hole begging to be filled. As freshman, he discovered Hyungwon was someone he would never want to lose despite all the times his girlfriend would visit him for a weekend.

That made it easier, referring to her as his best friends girlfriend. It's who she was. He didn't know her anymore and acknowledging the longing he felt for a second chance at a missed opportunity did nothing to help.

Hoseok lays down in his bed one late night in April, the sounds of his best friends light snores carrying him to sleep, only for those same snores to wake him up three years later in their shared apartment. They'd fallen asleep on the couch while watching a movie together the previous night. The unsettling part was the female between the two friends, a girl his best friend had loved the past six years and he'd loved the past eight. Her head rested on Hyungwon's thigh as he'd fallen asleep in a sitting position, much like Hoseok himself. She was so beautiful his heart ached for a future that never existed every _god damn_ day, and every day he hated himself a little more. Thoughts alone didn't make him evil. He couldn't help how he felt; he could only help how he reacted. Therein laid the problem, as he glanced from Hyungwon's lap where he and the girl between them held hands, down to her hips where her other hand rested hidden between her and the couch. His hand was there too, buried and tangled with hers like a secret.

To his surprise, his first reaction wasn't to enjoy it awhile longer but to pull away. He couldn't do that to Hyungwon. He couldn't do that to her. He couldn't do that to himself.

Her fingers tightened around his that morning and that was the first of many unspoken confessions. When he relaxed his body and squeezed her hand briefly, he fell through the next two years until his back hit his mattress. Two years that he could have pretended that morning never happened and finally move on with his life, but Hoseok had always been a masochist for her love. She'd found him crying once, a scenario he found himself in all too often. Crying because the pain and heartache was so intense he could physically feel it, crying because how could he ever learn to breathe again? How could someone make him feel that way, be his one second and gone the next? How could he possibly stop loving her? She'd found him pondering these thoughts through swollen eyes and labored breathing. She'd asked him what was wrong and he'd told her not to worry about it, he would be okay soon, but she knew. She knew he would be okay for a little bit, it wouldn't hurt as much for a few days, but it would come crashing back on him the way it always did. She knew what he refused to admit all those years ago.

Hoseok, an ever-weak teenager disguised as a man, was suffocating. He was choking on his feelings, choking on his tears, choking on words he prayed _every goddamn day_ he could travel back in time to say. So he sought distractions, ways to forget the feelings he'd worked so hard to bury. All it took was a look from her, a rabbit hole of thoughts, and the shovel was there, digging them up and kicking dirt into his lungs. He hated how easy it was to pretend the looks she gave him were anything more than concern, pity, or some shitty rendition of friendship. He hated how easy it was to stay in love with her. He hated how easy it was for her to smile at him while she held Hyungwon's hand. 

When he was fifteen he was innocent and in love and so, _so_ stupid. Ten years later, not much was different except a man now weak to desires. Of course, none of them could ever be her for as long as she loved his best friend, but it didn't stop the rope of women he pulled through the front door to his bedroom. He'd lost count of how many people he'd slept with now, the same way he lost count of how many times he almost said "I love you" to her.

Maybe it would be fair, to finally give her that. She'd waited ten years now, hadn't she? Since she first said it to him and he didn't reply and panicked and pushed her away and broke her heart.

_Idiot. Just an idiot._

One afternoon, Hyungwon isn't home and he has the apartment to himself. Of all the ways to spend that time, Hoseok dwells. The memory of him pushing her away always strikes hardest, nothing short of an incessant remind that everything he wants could have been his, could still be his, but he messed it up. It was nothing to do with the hands of fate and all to do with him being stupid, scared and in love. It's funny, he thinks, that he calls it 'pushing her away.' He knew how to dance once, a silly school dance his mom had forced him to go to, and then he only knew how to run.

Other memories hit, ones that only intensify the hatred he feels for himself. The way he'd watch from the sidelines of shared classes as she drifted away from the girl he was so used to seeing and into someone with eyes that looked ready to spill tears at any moment. He watched her morph into a girl whose smile stopped reaching her eyes, a girl with a voice that no longer spoke with confidence. It wasn't permanent, but god damn it hurt knowing he was at fault and could never take these months back. 

When Hoseok was seventeen, he'd set out to her house with every intention of making up for what he'd done, or rather hadn't. He'd been torn between an apology and just telling her a truth he'd been to scared to admit before, so he'd prepared a speech for both. It'd been several days spent in his room or on lonely walks collecting his thoughts into something coherent and it was on one of these walks that he'd made an impulse stop at a flower shop and went to find her, bouquet tucked behind his back. It was a beautiful arrangement, short of her own beauty but he supposed nothing would ever compare. He'd slowly teetered toward the "I love you" speech during the journey, but upon reaching her block where he expected a vacant porch awaiting his presence, he found her there kissing a tall boy named Hyungwon goodbye. It'd been their first date, he found out while they swung quietly on the porch swing after she'd accepted his apology speech with open arms and a warm smile. A stupid apology that he'd desperately wished could have been a different speech, but Hoseok was left to tell himself platonic was okay every day as months turned into years and Hyungwon continued to be the only male she had eyes for.

But platonic was not okay, and that much was evident as Hoseok continued to show his affinity for running, starting with Senior Prom. He'd felt like he was leaving everything on the crowded gymnasium floor at her feet, but the only thing he left was their friendship. Even after Hyungwon became his roommate at Uni, it took until they shared their very own apartment for a second attempt at rekindling a friendship with her. Stupid and immature, yes, but Hoseok had always been a fool for her.

Nothing was the same and everything hurt. He wishes he could have seen it then, how detrimental he was to her feelings. As if hurting her and leaving her once wasn't bad enough, he had to find his way back in, repeat the past, and come weaseling back in four years later. Now here he is again, ready to repeat the process without a second thought, let her grow confused and torn about her feelings towards him. A small, sick part of him is happy. Not happy for the opportunity to cause more pain, but happy because after all these years, she was caving, allowing herself to feel more than she should for a friend. Her boyfriends best friend, of all people. Hoseok figures he's the worst person in the equation, allowing it to happen and wanting it even more.

After ten years, Hoseok realizes he's glad that she's with Hyungwon. Hyungwon, who is always a good person, Hyungwon who knows his feelings and expresses them openly and honestly, Hyungwon who had never hurt her. Hyungwon, who never would.

Barely a week passes when he finds himself in front of her. She'd stayed the night and Hyungwon had gone to work. Another thing on the list of many things he couldn't recall is how she ends up in his arms again. They're standing in his room, music softly playing in the background. He didn't hear it. The only thing he knew was he was fifteen again and she was grace embodied. His movements were smooth, just like that first night. If he closed his eyes, he'd be there again on an empty gymnasium floor and spotlights to occasionally flaunt their joined hands to the students occupying the sidelines. The room was dark but he could still see the way she looked at him, with that smile and those eyes that used to be his but now should have been meant for a man who wasn't home.

A lump grows in his throat as everything finally makes sense. She was in love with him, three words she'd whispered to him ten years ago just as prevalent now. But it was too late, he knew, she knew. He dipped his face closer to hers, watching her eyes close slightly, staring half-lidded at his lips. He wanted to, _god_ he wanted to. If he could just have one more night, one more chance...

He draws back and removes his hands from her. The dark room disappears from him as light sheds over the last two years of hidden smiles and hands tangled together like a secret. She was willing without even realizing to throw everything away for a lost dream. They would both lose Hyungwon for one dip into a fantasy that would not be seen through to the end.

It's only fair of him to tell her everything before they're both forced to accept that they can't continue the lie. It's only fair that she knows he loved her as much ten years ago as he does now. It's only fair that she knows that every time he looks at her he's fifteen again and dancing with another person for the first time. He tells her the way it feels at night sometimes, when he's alone in bed and the weight of it rests on top of him and he struggles to breathe. He apologizes for the way he hurt her and he tells her she belongs with Hyungwon.

The words all felt foreign to actually leave his mouth and for a moment he wonders if they did, but at the sight of her quivering lips and eyes tearing up he knows they have. He wraps his arms around her, hand on the back of her head to hold her against his chest while she cries. It's the least he could do, finally be the one to comfort her as he has once again successfully repeated the cycle.

It all feels so childish to him, the way it played out, but he supposes they were kids and it was natural to mess up a relationship, especially your first one. How could they help that she met Hyungwon and they fell in love and got married ten years later?

When that thought crosses his mind, Hoseok pulls away from the girl he loves and takes in the sight of her white wedding dress. The lights are much brighter here than when they stood in his room two years prior, sharing a dance that turned into a mess of confessions and crying and eventual acceptance. She'd already shared the dances with Hyungwon, her loving and beautiful husband. Hoseok had stood off to the side while they danced, hands clasped in front of him this time and smiling the whole time because he loved both of them. Even if in different ways, he loved them both. Now, just like at their Senior prom she was in his arms again. _For old time's sake_ , she'd said. With hearts that were simultaneously light and heavy, they'd taken each others hand. 

Despite that love, after he watched his best friend leave with the woman they both loved, stood beside her like Hoseok could have been if fifteen was different, he found himself in his room, body shaking with the force of his sobs. His cheeks were soaked, an endless stream of tears pouring from his red, swollen eyes. It was lucky he was alone because the pain was so intense, something so much worse than he could have imagined, that the sobs brought forth wails that tore through his throat. He was curled up in the corner of his bed, knees to his chest and hands over his eyes. Why was a fully grown man crying over such a thing? His voice cracked and his lungs felt like they were caving as he alternated between wailing and whispering out a mantra _make it stop make it stop make it stop_ -

Two weeks passed before the honeymoon came to an end. The newlywed couple returned to the apartment where they'd been living together along with Hoseok that past year. A month passed and they were gone. Hoseok was alone like he had been the last twelve years. 

The pain subsided after awhile. The marriage had really solidified the idea in his mind. She would never be his again. It was eleven years overdue for him to move on, leaving one exceptionally long year for him to wallow in self-pity after what a stupid fifteen year old boy did.

On the nights he would spend at the Chae household sometimes he would see it, that look she'd given him among other unspoken confessions years ago. The ache was still there in both of them, but at this point he wondered how much of it was just her being worried about him and not actually being in love with him. She was right - it was too late and it had been too late from the moment she first kissed Hyungwon.

He decided he would never get married. Though it was something he didn't think about often, knowing and accepting that he couldn't have her and no longer being in love with her were two very different things, the latter of which he saw no chance.

Hoseok laid down on the bed in their guest room and woke up the next morning to the smell of breakfast. He stumbled out of the room wiping sleep from his eyes when he spotted a very sleepy Hyungwon leaned over the back of grace embodied. She was laughing about something he mumbled from a sleep-addled brain while she flipped a pancake. Hoseok watched as Hyungwon's thick lips slowly stretched into the most contented smile, lanky arms coming to wrap around his wife.

The three of them sat around the dining table shortly after, eating the breakfast she'd made them. Hyungwon was moving slowly, very much like a sloth. Hoseok felt a fondness swell in his heart as he recalled their days of college and how Hyungwon would walk through the days half-asleep but still somehow pass his classes. She seemed to feel that same fondness as a familiar smile curled her lips just barely. He admires the way they love each other, his own lips stretching into a smile that shows off his teeth. Hyungwon was his best friend and he could think of no better person to love a girl when he could not. A long forgotten but entirely familiar sense of serenity washes over Hoseok and for the first time in a very long time, it doesn't hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Wonho is always slow dancing in the dark, every time he closes his eyes :')  
> Also I would just like to say in the scene when they're dancing in his bedroom and it says she's staring at him with that smile and those eyes that were meant for someone else now- "You looked at me like I was someone else" because that lyric is fuckin beautiful. ALSO, this is just inspired by that song, this is not a song fic because the story would have been a lot different and Wonho would have had a much messier life. Haha. I don't think this story really captures the meaning of that song. ♡


End file.
